“Ziva, let me do it,” Petrik says.
“Just let me do it,” Temra puts in. “I’ll be in and out in two minutes, tops.”
If we weren’t in such a hurry, perhaps I would take the time to ponder the fact that everyone is deferring to me. When did my decision become the final say in the matter? When did I become the leader of this poorly-stitched-together group?
“Ziva—” Petrik starts.
“Enough,” I say.
I put my fingers to my temples, as though that will help me think. I’d rather be the one to take this risk. If anyone is going to get caught, it should be me.
But if I’m caught, I’ll leave Temra on her own, protecting that Twins-forsaken sword.
“Kellyn will do it. He hasn’t gone back on his word. Not once.” I force myself to look him in the eye. “Do you promise to sell this spear and return the earnings to us?”
Kellyn steps forward. “I do.”
I believe him, and I think he knows I do, but seeing Petrik’s hesitancy, Kellyn slides the massive longsword scabbard from off his back and tosses it to Petrik, sword and all.
Petrik fumbles with the weapon before dropping it.
“Why don’t you keep watch over that for me until I return? If you can manage to hoist it at all.” Then he takes the spear and dashes to the front of the pawnshop.
And we wait.
“If I can manage to hoist it,” Petrik says in a laughably mocking tone of Kellyn’s voice, but Temra and I manage straight faces. Petrik bends down, wraps both hands around the scabbard, and heaves.
He holds the weapon triumphantly in both hands, but after a minute, his arms start shaking. He tosses the sword aside and side-eyes Temra, as though hoping she didn’t notice.
Seeing that she did, he sighs before fixing his attention on the back of the shop.
“What are you doing?” Temra asks him.
“Like I said, I don’t trust him. I want to make sure he doesn’t try to run out the back with our money.”
I roll my eyes. “And leave his precious longsword behind? He wouldn’t.”
Temra says, “With that much money, he could buy a new one ten times over.”
“Yes, thank you, Temra, that comment is definitely helping things,” I snap.
“I’m just saying.”
“The mercenary was the only choice. Now let’s just wait before we start getting cynical.”
There’s some foot traffic on the main street behind us. The smell of fresh rainfall was present throughout the entire journey, but now that we’ve arrived in the capital, the city has covered it up, replacing it with body odors and horse manure.
Those in the city wear leathers with fur embellishments at their cuffs and collars. They appear to be quite the community of hunters, I observe, as I watch a cart of antlers go by. Many in the street have bows slung over their shoulders.
Though the rain lessened the more we traveled southeast, it hasn’t stopped. Even now our boots are covered in mud clear up to our knees. The baths we had in Thersa were a lifetime ago. We’re hungry, we’re wet, we’re cranky.
And we’re going to have to stay in a public house until we find a place of our own. I try not to grimace.
“Is that him?” Temra asks shortly after I hear a door slamming.
She’s not pointing toward the front of the shop, where Kellyn entered, but at the back, where a tall figure is walking away.
“That’s not him,” I say. Kellyn doesn’t look like that from behind. I would know. I spent so much time glaring at his back. He’s broader, holds himself straighter than whoever this fellow is.
“There’s not many guys that freakishly tall,” Petrik says. “Kellyn!”
The figure turns.
And there’s no mistaking that it’s the mercenary.
Kellyn winks at me, jingling a heavy purse of money in one hand, before he takes off like a pack of hungry beasts is behind him.
Temra, Petrik, and I freeze for one moment. Confusion takes over. I was so sure that wasn’t Kellyn until I saw his face. Temra and Petrik recover before I do, leaping after the mercenary, but it isn’t long before I surpass them with my longer legs.
“Trust the mercenary,” Petrik says. “Might as well trust a starving lion!” He falls behind Temra and me quickly, despite his best efforts to keep up.
My face turns beet red, but it has nothing to do with the exertion. Kellyn just made a fool of me. Both Petrik and Temra will blame me for this. We can’t lose our money. Not again.
There are so many threats I’d like to hurl at that long, muscled back. First among them is to halt before I unsheathe Secret Eater and detach the mercenary’s knees from the rest of his body. I could do it so easily.
It’s a fanciful thought, but one I would never carry out. I’ll leave the violence to Temra.
Kellyn pushes people over in his haste, angry shouts following in his wake. He leaps over a parked wagon, slides around a shop corner, barrels into a merchant’s cart full of fruit. I hear Petrik slip on a rolling orange from behind me. Temra loses ground as she has to veer around the overturned cart.
And I’m hot on the mercenary’s heels, having jumped the obstacle.
That good-for-nothing wastrel. That lying, scheming, self-obsessed, worthless little worm of a man. When I get my hands on him, I’m going to yell until I lose my voice.
He’s heading farther and farther out of town. Does he mean to traverse back to the road out of the city? He won’t have anywhere to hide then!
Not that he’s been trying to hide. He made a point of slamming the door out of the pawnshop, after all, did he not? And he brandished that bag of coins at me. Taunting me, even. Daring me to chase after him.
Almost as if—
I stop in my tracks. Temra bashes into my arm, not stopping in time. The panting sound behind us must be the scholar.
“What are you doing? He’s getting away!” Temra screams.
“Something’s wrong,” I say.
“You can tell me while we run,” she says, yanking my arm and trying to physically pull me after Kellyn.
“He left his sword,” I say.
“I already mentioned he could buy a new one.”
“But that one was special to him. He loves Lady Killer. And he’s—well, it’s like he’s leading us somewhere.”
Kellyn disappears around a bend in the road, just where the houses of the city end and morph into trees, where the noises of the market fade into animal calls. Secluded. Private.
“If he wanted to run off with the money, he wouldn’t have made so much noise about it,” I say. “He would have been sneaky. Quiet.”
“He’s an arrogant—bastard,” Petrik says between breaths. “This was exactly his style.”
“No, I don’t think—”
The foot traffic had been thinning, but all of a sudden about thirty people step onto the road. People in red with falcons on their chests.
And Kellyn.
Kellyn is among them.
Standing there like he knows them.
Only, he still looks off to me. He’s holding himself differently. And his stature isn’t quite right.
What has happened to him?
“You!” Petrik bellows across the road to where Kellyn stands among all of Kymora’s soldiers.
Temra is speechless. For while she thought him capable of running off with our money, she didn’t think he’d do this.
Neither did I.
“But Secret Eater,” I say quietly to my companions. “I cut him.”
He must have changed his mind. Maybe Kymora got to him in Thersa, convinced him to lead us to a place where she had more forces stationed. I suppose if she offered him enough money—
But Kymora isn’t among her soldiers. If she knew we’d be here, then where is she?
“Ziva Tellion!” a woman who is almost as tall as I am shouts. “Hand over your weapons or prepare to have them removed from you by force.”
“Eat dirt,” Petrik says.
Temra nods at him in approval. “Yeah, shove off, lady. You can have them when you rip them from our cold, dead fingers.”
Petrik snaps his neck in her direction. “Perhaps we need not take it that far.”
“When you’re vastly outnumbered,” Temra says through clenched teeth, “sometimes you have to rely on intimidation.”
“And the mercenary also said he’d be right back with our money! So clearly he’s a great source of wisdom!”